KING OF THE BRITONS? So we finally saw King Arthur: Jess felt it moved too far away from the more familiar story but I thought this was an advantage. There are only so many ways you can keep shooting the same overly familiar images, besides which if I wanted lots of shiny armour and clunky knights I'd just watch Excalibur for the umpteeth time. Or maybe Monty Python and The Holy Grail. It's difficult to get out of the shadow of Python especially with a British audience. I thought Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was funny as fuck mostly because I was singing 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' to myself throughout the flogging scenes. But I've been a big fan of Clive Owen for years (he owned The Bourne Identity and would make an excellent Bond) and he does an excellent job of moving this Arthur away from the dead claws of Graham Chapman. It took me a while to settle in though. The first glimpse of Merlin reminded me of Slartybartfast but then I just pictured Alan Moore living in a forest and eating bugs while making copious and detailed notes on tree bark and the whole thing fell into place for me. It was all about the shouting. This was a great time to be bearded and have a good set of lungs. Never have I seen so many ugly men shout so unintelligibly and so often. It was fucking fantastic. The perfect antidote to Troy which was all about pretty boys, prancing around in the sun and topping up their tans. This was about real men with axes and beards and scars and fur and swords and shouting. Stellan Skarsg�rd was awesome. Burning and pillaging and saving women from rape by killing them lest his Saxon people become watered down. Best role I've seen him in since his arm got chewed off in my beloved Deep Blue Sea. These days the only people with scars are troubled teenagers who listen to too much emo and then write about their unrequited loves on livejournal with names like DaRksOUl. They all need to be sent to some kind of Viking camp. There's a reality show for you. Ray Winstone could host it. I can't really fault the cast. Lancelot is a tad girly but he's a nice foil to the rest of the grimy knights, especially Winstone who headbutts and shouts his way through battle like a football fan in Turkey. Good stuff. The humour is light and spot on - mostly from or at the expense of Winstone who needs to make more movies like this. I'd actually forgotten what a delight he is. At times it's a little reminiscent of his time in Robin of Sherwood but then he swears or stabs someone in the face and reminds you where we are. He's playing William Blake next. That should be interesting... So Arthur is half Roman, the knights are conscripts in the Roman army and England is a festering little outpost about to be left to the wolves. On the eve of their freedom Arthur and co are 'asked' to do one final 'Saving Patrician Ryanus' type mission. It's never really explained what a handful of Romans are doing on the wrong side of Hadrian's Wall but they seem to be trying to convert the heathens by killing them and talking in comedy accents. Arthur arrives and sets right a few wrongs (if only we could brick up priests these days) before deciding to save every fucker North of the border and pick off a few hundred Saxon on the way back. The standoff on the ice is a great set piece. Maybe the best part of the movie and a fuck of a lot better than anything I've seen since The Two Towers. Once back at the Wall Arthur must decide whether to go home to Rome and sit around on cushions all day or stay and fight an impossible amount of Saxons all on his lonesome . Tough decision. Throughout all this are a scattering of Arthurian names and we get a look at the round table and a flashback to the 'sword in the stone' which is well done and makes perfect sense. The movie wisely moves away from the Lancelot/Guinevere/Arthur love triangle but still ensures that Lancelot 'steals' Guinevere's heart in a much less melodramatic fashion. It manages to write a history that could easily get distorted into myth over time and the whole thing feels very British. No Americans doing dodgy olde worlde cockney although Keira Knightley's upper class accent is way off the mark with her cast as a Woad olde Englishe tree type. But she kicks a tremendous amount of bottom when fighting with all her bumps strapped down and fellow blue flesh graffitied girlies on hand to help bring down a lumbering Saxon or two. I wouldn't mind more of this kind of thing - someone should shove a version of Slaine into production as a good warp spasm fuelled movie would fit snugly into the recent glut of sword movies. Best bit? The horses. Not the final sequence as that was a tad too like a Guiness advert and the voiceover was hammering the point home too hard. But there's some nice interplay between the knights and the animals. A horse nudging at it's dead rider and the knights being turned around by their horses who seem to want to do the 'right thing' more than the riders are nice touches. My friend has a horse and I now need to convince him to attach an axe blade to it's head. It was also nice to see the North of England depicted as a hostile unliveable piss wet crap hole - it's still pretty much like Mordor even now. It was refreshing to show Britain as a place where legends and heroics were born from reality as opposed to all the fantasy drivel about elves and dwarves that is still in vogue thanks to Peter Jackson. Maybe after he fucks up King Kong he can go back to making zombie movies... Mike is blogging to: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds